Technology & Science
Christmas 2025 ‘Pineapple Express’ Atmospheric River Slams Southern California
Between 22-25 December 2025, a Hawaii-sourced atmospheric river dumped record holiday rainfall on Southern California, forcing mass evacuations and emergency declarations as saturated terrain triggered flash floods and debris flows.
Focusing Facts
- The National Weather Service issued a rare High-Risk (Level 4/4) excessive-rainfall outlook for the Burbank-Thousand Oaks-San Bernardino corridor on 24 Dec, warning of flash floods within a 24-hour window.
- Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for six counties (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Shasta) on 24 Dec to unlock state resources and National Guard support.
- Rain gauges recorded 11.9 inches at San Gabriel Dam and 80 mph wind gusts in L.A. County mountains by mid-afternoon 24 Dec, with 150,000+ customers losing power statewide.
Context
California has seen Christmas deluges before—most notably the 1861-62 ‘Great Flood’ that briefly turned the Central Valley into an inland sea and bankrupted the state—but this storm echoes the 1997-98 and January 2023 atmospheric-river clusters in its rapid succession of moisture plumes. The event highlights two converging long-term trends: (1) warming Pacific SSTs that intensify AR frequency and water vapor content, and (2) expanding wildfire burn scars that convert rainstorms into deadly debris flows, shrinking the buffer between fire season and flood season. While a single storm will not reverse the West’s chronic water deficits, the mounting economic cost of weather whiplash—power grids, transport corridors, insurance markets—suggests that California’s 21st-century challenge may be managing extremes rather than scarcity. On a 100-year scale, how society adapts its land-use, drainage, and emergency systems to these ‘ARkStorm-lite’ events will determine whether they remain episodic disasters or become merely managed inconveniences.
Perspectives
Southern California local media
e.g., ABC7, KTLA 5, My News LA — Warns residents in specific burn-scar neighborhoods to prepare for evacuations and highlights the incoming “Pineapple Express” as a dangerous flash-flood threat during Christmas week. Because these outlets serve the affected communities and rely on city agencies, they foreground official advisories and practical tips, potentially underplaying the wider, statewide scale of damage.
National U.S. mainstream outlets
e.g., Washington Post, CNN/Yahoo News, AOL — Presents the storm as a major statewide disaster, citing deaths, widespread power outages and Governor Newsom’s emergency declaration while forecasting record rain totals through Christmas. Seeking a broad audience, these publications spotlight dramatic imagery, casualty figures and superlatives that amplify the sense of crisis to keep national readers engaged.
International/UK-based media
The Independent — Depicts the holiday storm as an extreme weather event capable of dumping up to eight inches of rain on Los Angeles, spawning tornado warnings and winds to 130 mph. Lacking local accountability, foreign coverage leans on sensational details to make distant news feel urgent, which can exaggerate worst-case scenarios for overseas readers.